Opening the debate that took place at the Frontline Club on 9th April to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Mukesh Kapila, former humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, claimed that the legacy of this experience is to to make us all Rwandans, “because a crime against humanity in one place becomes a crime against all humanity everywhere.”

L-R Mukesh Kapila, David Belton, Sam Kiley, Williams Nkurunziza and Eric Murangwa Eugene

His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza, High Commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, began by assessing the strides made over the last 20 years.

“By every measure of assessment, if you look at Rwanda – the basket case of 1994 has become the model state of 2014.”

The success and effectiveness of this transformation can be attributed, according to Nkurunziza, to three choices made by President Kagame and the government directly after the genocide. To “chose to be together” by resisting the potential for victims and perpetrators, forced to live together in the aftermath of genocide, to engage in a cycle of retribution. “To chose to be accountable”, by ensuring a “new inclusive political dispensation… where a winner cannot take all [and] where even the losers must participate in the process of governance to ensure all Rwandans must be inheritors of the mess that was left in 1994”. Finally, Nkurunziza cited the importance of thinking beyond the traditional paradigm, specifically in the engagement of women as equal participants in the process of governance.

Most importantly it is this path of restorative justice over punitive justice which has enabled the country to move towards reconciliation at such pace.

David Belton, who experienced the genocide first hand whilst reporting for the BBC, did not question this assessment of the government’s, but rather “ where one’s identity, where one’s past, one’s memories exist in this new paradigm.” For Belton, it becomes a question of how one deals with the past and forge a new identity for the future within this “post-trauma society”.

For Eric Murangwa Eugene, who survived the genocide, it is the three decades leading up to 1994, in which the political establishment enforced the idea of difference and the notion of ‘the enemy within’, which means that the process of reconciliation becomes a much longer process.

Kapila elaborated on this by stating that the success of the reconciliation process was based on the fact that a determination “not to hide the truth” was not viewed just in a psychological sense, but through a political and institutional approach,

“Reconciliation succeeded because it wasn’t just a sentimental thing, there was a very strong sense of justice and truth-telling that went along with it. There is a question of whether reconciliation can be forced? One has to say the right thing before it becomes internalised and then doing the right thing follows.”

When questioned over why it is the West that should be asked to carry the burden of moral responsibility for international inventions, Kapila remarked that the lessons learned show that “nobody saved Rwanda… outside people cannot save these things. The real resistance comes from within. The role of the international community is to make sure we don’t stand in the way. And when we do intervene we have to make sure there is proper accountability”. He cited specifically Kofi Annan’s sanitisation of reports transmitted to the UN security council.

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To this Belton interjected, instead arguing that the experience of Rwanda proves that the international community could and should have intervened very quickly and effectively with as little as 5000 UN peacekeeping troops.

“It is a question of ‘just cause’, as defined by Tony Blair in 1999, as to whether you had the moral right, whether you could do it militarily, whether you are in for the long term…”

“The critical thing is that you have to have transparency, which enables everyone to have a better understanding about who is shaping events. I think we are at a place now, where you see the connivance by the internal community for what it is… as cowardice and failure.”

Returning to a question of accountability and responsibility, Ambassador Nkurunziza stated that “fixing Rwanda’s problems should be left to Rwandans… however, that does not absolve the international community.”

“[The genocide] didn’t happen because people didn’t know about it… it happened because people didn’t care.” He went on to emphasise the need for dialogue between the West and Rwanda.

For Belton, however, while this new dialogue is essential it should not be at the expense of denying the past, or the historical identities that have shaped Rwanda.

“You need space for people to develop their own narratives, to develop the confidence to be able to say I am Rwandan and I am also a Tutsi. Can they develop their own stories, their own histories which are not contaminated – which can lead to the shared value system that enables them to make choices about who they want to be rather than being told what to be?”

Watch or listen to the event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-rwandan-genocide-lessons

On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali airport. The events that followed saw bitter ethnic divisions engulf the country: neighbour turned on neighbour and in the space of 100 days an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed.

At the time the international community was heavily criticised for its slow response and now declassified diplomatic cables have revealed that the US, Britain and the United Nations were explicitly warned that a “new bloodbath” was imminent in Rwanda.

Twenty years on we will look at how communities in Rwanda have been reconciled, the political, social and economic strides the country has taken and what more still needs to be done. We will also ask if the international community has learnt its lessons and if it can ensure that such a failure to react will never occur again.

Chaired by foreign affairs editor of Sky News, Sam Kiley. Through the 90’s he served as Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).

The panel:

David Belton worked as a producer at BBC Newsnight in the 1990s where, amongst many foreign assignments, he covered the civil war in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. In 2002, he co-wrote the story and produced the award-winning feature film Shooting Dogs based on real events that had taken place during the Rwandan genocide. He has since produced and directed many critically acclaimed and award-winning documentaries for British and American television. When The Hills Ask For Your Blood: A Personal Story of Genocide and Rwanda is his first book.

Eric Murangwa Eugene is a Rwandan survivor of the 1994 genocide and former Rwandan international football player who founded Football for Hope, Peace and Unity (FHPU Enterprise) an initiative which uses sport and football in particular to assist the transformation of Rwandan community for social change and reconciliation here in the UK and in Rwanda itself.

Mukesh Kapila, CBE is professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs at the University of Manchester. Previously he was Under Secretary General at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. He was the first UK government official to enter Kigali in 1994 after the genocide. He is author of Against a Tide of Evil.

His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza is the high commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom and non-resident ambassador to Ireland. His previous posting was as high commissioner to India. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served as director general of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotional Agency (RIEPA), during which time he worked to reposition post-genocide Rwanda in the international marketplace as an ideal investment destination and a reliable trading partner. During this time, he also served on President Paul Kagame’s Presidential Economic Advisory Council.